It must have been terribly lonely for them, he thought. No wonder their stories were filled with fairies, pixies, vampires and other half-human creatures.
But was that loneliness what had driven them to upgrade other primates?
Life for most of the uplifted creatures had not been pleasant. Some bore lingering pain from the surgery that had increased their intelligence; others simply pined for more of their kind, or for a release from captivity. Some, like Ack-Ack Macaque, had been plugged into virtual reality environments, such as games or targeting systems; while others lived out their days in laboratories or cages.
Now, thanks to Ack-Ack Macaque, they were all free. They had this island, which they’d named after the monkey kingdom in the story of the
Ramayana
; and they had each other. And, while Ack-Ack Macaque was away with the
Sun Wukong
, Bali had command. In the big guy’s absence, he was the alpha male.
And so it had fallen to him to kill the leopard.
He could feel it behind him in the shadows, and imagine it edging closer and closer, its belly brushing the leaves of the forest floor, haunches trembling, muscles coiled and ready to strike, spotted fur quivering.
Not today, mon ami.
In his lap, Bali held an automatic pistol and a hunting knife. All he needed was to draw the animal to him, and bring it close enough for a clean shot, or a deft strike with the blade.
The beast had been hanging around the camp for a couple of weeks. In that time, it had taken a lamb and half a dozen chickens. Then, last night, it had attacked and killed one of the chimps as they were out gathering firewood. How it got onto the island, nobody knew. Bali’s best guess was that it must have swum across the strait from the mainland, but he had no idea what could have driven it to attempt such an arduous feat, unless it had been drawn by cooking smells and the promise of fresh monkey meat.
He glanced down at the knife in his left hand. When he killed the leopard, he had decided he’d gut it and wear its skin as a trophy. He would walk back into the stockade draped in the pelt and blood of the vanquished beast. A display like that would impress the rest of the troupe, and strengthen his position as alpha. It might even convince a few of them that he should be running the show, rather than Ack-Ack Macaque. After all, where was their precious leader now that they needed him? Swanking around the multiverse in his dreadnought with the women, while the rest of them were here in the jungle, facing down predators and building a civilisation from scratch, with little in the way of luxury—and no females.
Bali felt his lips draw back from his sharp incisors. If he were in charge, things would be different. Good lord, yes. Less crude, more forward thinking, more
businesslike
. And there would be females! Even if he had to raid a zoo, he would find some.
To hell with trying to build a homeland of our own,
he thought. What could be more inefficient? With their numbers and the dreadnought, they could take one by force, rather than carving it from the jungle by hand. There were so many human worlds. Surely they could find a lightly defended one that was ripe for a management takeover, with plenty of human slaves to do their bidding? After everything they’d suffered at the hands of the humans, surely they were owed a modicum of revenge, not to mention compensation?
Before being picked up by the
Sun Wukong
, Bali had been kept in a temple, chained to a wall and fed by the monks. They had taken him in following his escape from the laboratory that created him. The monks revered him as an aspect of their monkey god, Hanuman, and he’d enjoyed being pampered. Despite the chain, he had been looked after and respected, and he missed that. He had liked being a god. His grip tightened on the knife. He would be one again. When he became the true and undisputed alpha, he would fashion himself as a fearsome leopard god, falling from the skies to plunder world after world. Instead of hiding here, on an empty parallel devoid of humans, he and his brethren would avenge themselves on their creators. They would gather riches and power—and, most importantly, females—and he would be the true, one-and-only alpha, forever.
His nostrils quivered. On the breeze, he caught the barest hint of cat; a fleeting waft of spice, sweat and blood. The beast must be close now. Slowly, so as not to startle it, he rose to his feet, gun held out to his right, knife to his left, naked save for the elasticated straps of his shoulder holster.
He felt invincible.
“Okay,
mon ami
, I am here, and I am ready.” His eyes swept the shadows and dapples between the trees, his ears strained for the stealthiest sound.
“Now, where are you?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHITS AND GIGGLES
S
TILL SHAKEN BY
the killing frenzy in the infirmary, Victoria summoned the
Sun Wukong
’s command crew to the airship’s briefing room. They sat in the front row of chairs, and she leant on the lectern before them. Outside the porthole, dusk had begun to lower.
“Okay,” she said, “Let’s review what we know about Nguyen.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stirred in his seat.
“He’s a fuck-head?”
Victoria ignored him. The gelware in her skull had been pumping sedatives into her bloodstream to calm her after the incident with Berg, and she felt lightheaded and in no mood to spar with the gruff old monkey. Instead, she nodded to K8.
“
S’il te plaît?
”
The white-suited teenager gave a tight smile, and unrolled a keypad. She tapped in a command and a screen lit behind Victoria. It displayed a photograph of a short, balding, middle-aged man with a stethoscope slung around his neck.
“Doctor Kenta Nguyen,” K8 said, reading from her notes. “Surgeon and gelware specialist. On our parallel, he was born on the seventh of December 1989, in Osaka, Japan. Mother Japanese, father from Vietnam. He graduated from university in Tokyo in June 2014; went to work on the Human Genome Project; and then went to work for the Céleste Institute, where he helped develop soul-catcher technology and became a pioneer in the field of gelware neural prostheses.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Ack-Ack Macaque made talking motions with his hands. “And then in 2059, he tried to blow up the world and turn everybody into robots. Yeah, we know the story.” He sat back in his chair. “I just don’t see what good talking about it’s going to do. I don’t need to understand the guy.” He made his fingers into the shape of a gun and took aim at an imaginary target. “I just need to know
where
he is.”
Victoria put her hands on her hips. “And then what are you going to do? You just want to shoot him?”
Ack-Ack Macaque’s grizzled face frowned in puzzlement.
“Well, yes.” His expression split into a toothy grin. “Something like that, anyway. You know the old saying, boss: revenge is a dish best served hot, from ten thousand feet.”
“You want to bomb the place?”
“I figure we cruise over and drop half a dozen missiles on the lab. That ought to do it.”
“Aerial bombardment?” Victoria shook her head. “That’s your answer to everything. Besides, we couldn’t be sure we’d got him, and there’d be a lot of innocents caught in the explosions. No, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it face-to-face. Up close and personal. Before he dies, he’s going to know who we are and why we’re there to stop him.”
The monkey huffed, and stuck out his bottom lip. “Then what do you suggest?”
Victoria drummed her nails on the edge of the lectern. “I suggest you take a small team and infiltrate the lab. Find Nguyen and bring him back on board.”
“A quick smash and grab?”
“Precisely.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stroked his hairy chin, considering. Then he shrugged.
“Okay, you got my vote. I’m happy as long as I get to wreck stuff and hurt people.” He pulled out a fresh cigar and ran it under his nose, savouring the smell.
“Who will you take?”
“Lumpy and Cuddles have commando training. Erik and Fang are handy in a fight.”
“
D’accord.
” Victoria folded her hands on top of the lectern. “Take them to the armoury and get what you need. We’ll be in position in thirty minutes.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stuck the cigar in his mouth, rose to his feet and threw her a floppy salute.
“Aye, boss.” He shambled out and K8 followed him, leaving Victoria and Paul by themselves.
Victoria looked at her ex-husband.
“What?” she asked.
Paul shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that. I know that look. What’s wrong?”
Paul pushed his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose.
“I’m just a bit concerned, that’s all.”
“About what?”
He looked down at his hands.
“About killing Nguyen.”
Victoria walked over and sat in the chair next to his. She thought of Berg, and shivered.
“In what sense?”
“In the moral sense.” He shifted around to face her. “I mean, I know the Nguyen on our world was a bastard and all, but does that justify us killing his counterpart on
this
parallel? For all we know, the man might be innocent.”
He looked so worried that Victoria felt a rush of affection, and had to consciously stop herself from putting an arm around him. She kept forgetting he was only made of light and that, if she tried to touch him, her fingers would pass right through his hologram body, saddening them both.
“I think I understand what you’re saying,” she said. “But you didn’t see Cassisus Berg. He looked exactly as he did before, with human skin over a metal skull. Which means Nguyen’s pursuing the same goals he was last time. He’s trying to build cyborg bodies for human brains.”
Paul looked unconvinced. “But that doesn’t mean he’s going to try to start a nuclear war, does it?”
“We can’t take that chance.”
“But what if he’s innocent?”
Victoria clenched her jaw. “He’s not.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She crossed her legs. “If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t have sent Berg to kill me. The other me, in Paris.”
“I suppose.”
He still looked doubtful. She let him mull her words over for a moment, then asked, “How are you feeling otherwise?”
He gave her a wary look. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m counting on you to fly this thing.”
He looked away. “I won’t let you down.”
Victoria clasped her hands on her knee.
Merde.
She took a deep breath, and made a decision.
“I’ll try not to let you down, either.”
“What do you mean?”
Fingers still interlocked, she tapped the ends of her thumbs together. “We won’t kill him.”
“Seriously?” Paul sat up straight.
Victoria exhaled. She had seen more than enough killing and death for one day—for one lifetime, even—and it disturbed her that assassinating the elderly scientist had been her default response. The man had done some terrible things on her world, but unthinkingly condemning his doppelganger to death put her on dubious moral ground.
“Seriously. Well, we’ll try. If we capture him in one piece, then instead of killing him, we can stick him in the brig until we find somewhere safe to maroon him, where he can’t do any harm. How about that?”
Paul swallowed.
“Thank you.” He looked about to cry.
“No.” Victoria gave him a smile that was part affection, part relief. Her conscience might have been asleep at its post, but his was as reliable as ever, and he’d saved her from making an irrevocable decision she might later have regretted. Killing Nguyen on this world would have made her no better than the monkeys in the infirmary, lashing out for vengeance with no thought for morals or justice. “Thank
you
.”
H
ALF AN HOUR
later, the
Sun Wukong
reached the outskirts of Paris. Ack-Ack Macaque and his team dropped from its underside, and their black parachutes flowered in the darkness. Below, the Malsight Institute was a large, smoked glass building surrounded by lawns and fountains, and a gradually emptying car park. The time was six o’clock, and workers were packing up for the day and leaving.
“Does this bring back memories, Chief?” Erik called. He was an orangutan, with arms made of sinew and covered in carrot-coloured hair.
Ack-Ack Macaque glared at him with his one good eye.
“Shut up and concentrate.”
They came down in a small, square courtyard at the centre of the building. As Ack-Ack Macaque’s boots hit the flagstones, he let out a grunt.
I really am getting too old for this crap.
He rolled over and hauled at the lines connecting him to his ’chute, pulling it towards him in great bundled armfuls. By the time he had it gathered, the rest of the team had done likewise, and were stuffing their ’chutes into the courtyard’s fountain. He crammed his in as well, and shuffled over to a fire escape.
“Cuddles, get this open.”
“Right away, Skip.” The young gorilla stalked forward on his knuckles. He was almost twice the size of Ack-Ack Macaque, and wore a gold chain and a set of specially adapted Ray-Bans. Without preamble, he punched his fist through the thin aluminum door and hauled back, ripping it from its frame.
“Good work.” Ack-Ack Macaque drew his revolvers. “Now, the rest of you, inside.”
He could feel his lungs heaving in his chest. He wasn’t as young as he’d once been, and all those cigars had taken their toll. He was happy to let the younger primates take the lead as he followed them into a corridor lined with offices.
“All right, split up, just like we planned. Cuddles, take the first floor; Lumpy, the second; Erik, the third. I’ll check out this one.”
He watched them go, scattering startled office workers as they charged towards the stairwell. Then he struck a match against the doorframe and lit his cigar.
Okay.
He knew the younger monkeys thought he’d picked the ground floor in order to avoid tiring himself on the stairs, but that wasn’t the reason; at least, not the
only
reason. He thought he knew Nguyen. He’d fought the man before, and had seen what a control freak he was. The old man liked to oversee everything. He wouldn’t be stuck away upstairs, he’d be down here, close to his minions and machinery.